"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The unstable isotope of insanity that is feminism reached critical mass a few months ago when radical feminist Cathy Brennan threatened legal action against the socialist magazine Jacobin, which published an article by Samantha Allen that included this:

A small but vocal band of activists known as “Radfems” see transgender women like myself as a blight on the feminist movement, but — because their views are not representative of the feminist movement as a whole — many trans-inclusive feminists refer to them as TERFs, or Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists.
The chief TERF figurehead is a Maryland attorney named Catherine Brennan who once served as a liaison on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. In July of 2012, a petition circulated to have Brennan removed from that position because, to put it mildly, she flatly rejected the “Gender Identity” half of her job description.
Apart from a sordid internet history of harassing, misgendering, and mocking trans people, Brennan co-authored a letter with Elizabeth Hungerford to the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, to argue against — yes, against — legal protections based on “gender identity or expression.”

Yeah, she’ll sue you: “Catherine Brennan, whose views are critiqued in the essay as being transphobic, has instructed her lawyer David Diggs to prepare litigation against Jacobin magazine.”

Truth is an unassailable defense, however, and it is difficult to answer “no” to the question, “Is Cathy Brennan transphobic?”

Cathy Brennan you potentially jeopardised this youths life to satisfy your hate of all people diverse.
I have resisted in the past contacting your law firm and exposing you as the vile monster you are, but you are really really trying my desire to remain above your contemptuous behaviour. Quit this Brennan or I will.
You are despicable Cathy Brennan. I will tell you that to your face. Use that for your next screen grab.

That is to say, once you buy a ticket on the baby-killing man-hating lesbian feminist express bus to Crazyville, it makes perfect sense. A transgender porn performer named Drew Deveaux coined the term “cotton ceiling” to describe the division between genetic women (called “ciswomen”) and “transwomen”:

Basically, it means that cis queer women will be friends with us and talk day and night about trans rights and ending transmisogyny, but will still not consider us viable sexual partners.
The term cotton ceiling is a reference to the “glass ceiling” that second wave feminist identified in the workforce, wherein women could only advance so high in the workforce but could not break through into positions of power and authority. The cotton represents underwear, signifying sex.
The theory of the cotton ceiling is useful in identifying the dynamic trans women are experiencing, and is meant to open up conversation around desirability’s intersections with transmisogyny and transphobia.

Ri-iiight. If you were a radical lesbian feminist, wouldn’t you be angry about this? This wasn’t the trip you signed up for, after all. By blurring the line between male and female, transgenderism challenges your radical feminist commitment to man-hating.

To combat this existential threat to her radical worldview, Brennan created an anti-transgender blog called “Pretendbians,” which is funny as hell, if you’re a right-wing sexist homophobe like me. As a lesbian feminist, Brennan feels she is at liberty to say stuff about trannies that would make Fred Phelps blush with shame.

Cathy Brennan . . . is a lesbian radical feminist who’s made it her life goal to stalk, humiliate and endanger the lives of trans women, whom she believes are “fake” women trying to destroy feminism by infiltrating it. . . .
Cathy Brennan is a despicable human being, and if she hates you, you know you’re doing something right.

Sorry You’re A Vanillacentric
Privileged Trans Oppressor
. . . Why should the trans community have respect for a group of racist white radical feminists who have attacked our humanity and femininity for four decades with deleterious effects on our lives? . . .
[Brennan] also published the pre-transition names of trans feminine activists who have called out her vile behavior, used her access to the legal system as an attorney to frack with the legal gender change of another trans critic . . .
Oh yeah, did I forget to mention she was on the opposing side when Baltimore County, MD was debating passing trans human rights coverage? . .
Trans community, you cannot ignore in the vain hope she will go away someone who has the access to policy making tables that Brennan has and the willingness to use it against us. It’s a dangerous combination when you have a trans bigot willing and unrepentantly able to not only express anti-trans attitudes, but is actively working to inject them into policies that will have deleterious effects upon the entire trans community not only here in the United States but around the world.

Yes, that’s it: Welcome to the transgender Two-Minute Hate, with Cathy Brennan in the role of feminism’s Emmanuel Goldstein.

How much further down the Crazyville Road can these radical moonbats travel before they begin killing each other in the manner of Cambodia, Yugoslavia or Rwanda? When that happens, I’m sure, they’ll find a way to blame it on the heteronormative patriarchy.

With all due respect, 99% of the time gender aligns with sex at birth. The intrasexual – those born whose sex is not apparent are outliers and their clinical issues should be treated with great care.

Is the tragedy of David Reimer not lesson enough? Dr. Money should burn in hell.

The whole POLITICAL idea that gender is fluid and malleable and that people can “identify” at whim (see: California’s new law allowing self-identity to determine restroom use or team sport participation) is an exercise in power not science.

Surgery is not been a “cure” for transsexuals and the tragedy of suicide rates among those that have transitioned again points to the fact that their issues are between their ears not their legs.

The Duke lacrosse lynching was based on ideological prejudices, but in some places, – Steubenville comes to mind – stuff like that actually happens, and is tolerated.

Football increases the burden on alleged victims as well. Stonewalling, inaction, character assassination, diminishing the crime itself and
threatening texts after an alleged attack by a Notre Dame football
player led Lizzy Seeberg to take her own life. Her experience reportedly led at least one Notre Dame student not to report an alleged rape by another player. This is not just a major college football problem. We saw a similar problems in high school football in Maryville, Missouri and Steubenville, Ohio. Looking at the statistics, we can presume the aforementioned cases and others at Missouri, Montana or Vanderbilt are mere iceberg tips.

With all due respect, 99% of the time gender aligns with sex at birth.

I’d put it at 99.7% but close enough.

The intrasexual – those born whose sex is not apparent are outliers

I think you mean “intersex” not “intrasex”.

Technically, that’s 1 in 60, but as the majority are asymptomatic, requiring lab tests to detect, “one in a few hundred” or even “one in a thousand” for cases of complete ambiguity is more useful.

Is the tragedy of David Reimer not lesson enough? Dr. Money should burn in hell.

A figure straight out of a Greek tragedy. He did so much good, then at the end of his career, something so awful, so inexcusable, out of hubris that he’ll only be remembered as a monster. Which he was, at the end. May his socks rot.

The whole POLITICAL idea that gender is fluid and malleable and that
people can “identify” at whim (see: California’s new law allowing
self-identity to determine restroom use or team sport participation) is
an exercise in power not science.

The Californian law has nothing to do with the pernicious notion that gender is fluid or malleable.

It’s clearly not, for all but a small handful of genuine outliers, one in quite a few million, not one in a few thousand as with transsexuality..

Please don’t be taken in by the propaganda and misinformation about it. All it does is summarise in one place dozens of different parts in existing laws both state and federal to do with Trans and Intersex kids.

I’ll quote the digest in full.

Existing law
prohibits public schools from discriminating on the basis of specified
characteristics, including gender, gender identity, and gender
expression, and specifies various statements of legislative intent and
the policies of the state in that regard. Existing law requires that
participation in a particular physical education activity or sport, if
required of pupils of one sex, be available to pupils of each sex.
This
bill would require that a pupil be permitted to participate in
sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic
teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or
her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s
records.

So if a kid is female, but listed as male due to bureaucratic error, or being Intersex, or being Trans – you go by gender identity, which by custom is determined by consistent appearance over a long period, often medical reports, interviews with counselors etc on a case by case basis. You can’t make hard and fast rules, for while there are hundreds of kids like this in the California school system, circumstances might be completely different between them.

Consider the case of a child with 5ARD. Born looking female, female birth certificate, grows male genitalia at puberty (barring medical intervention).
This can either cause or cure Gender Dysphoria.
Seehttp://www.usrf.org/news/010308-guevedoces.html

School administrators aren’t lawyers. They need a straightforward summary of what existing law says, and its intent.

Surgery is not been a “cure” for transsexuals

95% cure rate. As near as we can tell, 100% if treatment starts early.

Professionals who take responsibility for these youth and are willing to
help should yet be fully aware of the impact of their interventions. In
this article, the pros and cons of the various approaches to youngsters
with GID are presented, hopefully inciting a sound scientific
discussion of the issue.

their issues are between their ears not their legs.

Correct – in the lymbic nucleus and other areas in fact. If the Superior Parietal Lobule is feminised, then female genitalia is required (regardless of overall Gender Identity, but there’s a pretty good correlation there).

As for talking cures :

Treatment aimed at trying to change a person’s gender identity and expression to become more congruent with sex assigned at birth has been attempted in the past without success (Gelder & Marks, 1969; Greenson, 1964), particularly in the long term (Cohen-Kettenis & Kuiper, 1984; Pauly, 1965). Such treatment is no longer considered ethical.

I liked it better in the good old days when people just stayed the gender they were born. I don’t understand women who become men so that they can then have sex with men and men who become women who then have sex with women People mutilate themselves for some disordered thinking and my insurance has to go up to pay for this surgery? There are either too many hormones in the water system, the evil/corrupt political culture wants to destroy the traditional family, the devil is at work and/or people just need to realize that you don’t have to mutilate yourself in order to perhaps have some personality traits that don’t fit with your supposed gender type, Probably all four.

Based on the current record in this proceeding initiated by an
acceptable NCD complaint from an aggrieved party, the Departmental
Appeals Board (Board) has determined that the NCD (National Coverage
Determination) record in this case “is not complete and adequate to
support the validity of the NCD” denying Medicare coverage for
transsexual surgery “for sex reassignment of transsexuals.” 42 C.F.R. §
426.525(c)(3); NCD 140.3. The submissions of the aggrieved party and the
amici curiae, to which the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
(CMS) elected not to respond to defend the NCD, demonstrate that the
premises for the NCD, which was based on a 1981 review of medical and
scientific sources published between 1966 and 1980, are not reasonable
in light of subsequent developments. This proceeding will thus move on
to discovery and taking of evidence as provided in 42 C.F.R. §§ 426.532
and 426.540. This ruling does not address the ultimate question of
whether the NCD as written is valid under the reasonableness standard,
but only whether the existing NCD record on which the NCD was based is
complete and adequate to support its validity.

NCD 140.3, Transsexual Surgery
Docket No. A-13-47
NCD Ruling No. 2
December 2, 2013
BOARD RULING THAT NCD RECORD IS NOT COMPLETE AND ADEQUATE TO SUPPORT THE VALIDITY OF THE NCD

The fact that anybody ever took Mary Daly’s insanity as serious public rational discourse speaks to the irrationality of the TERF movement in general. Total Cyanide Koolaid Land.

OfficialPro January 5th, 2014 @ 12:28 am

ROFL That’s so true! XD

robcrawford2 January 5th, 2014 @ 1:23 am

Er, Zoe, I remember when you were a guy. And said you were the father of a son. That you had a congenital condition that required you to undergo gender reassignment.

That all strikes me as a completely different situation than someone with “normal” genetics who decides to do it.

And, frankly, I’ve heard more feminists demanding we IGNORE slavery and FGM and women as literal property because it’s all just right-wing distractions from the REAL problems than agitating that anything be done about it.

Here’s the effects. The only cure we’ve ever found that works (and we’ve tried pretty much everything) is transition.

Potential Therapeutic Errors When Using Binary Based Terminology to Explain the Gender Variant Condition Anne Vitale Ph.D. November 11, 2006

Secondly, “Dysphoria,” defined by Marriam-Webster’s Collegiate
dictionary as “a state of feeling unwell or unhappy,” or in the American
College Dictionary as “a state of dissatisfaction, anxiety,
restlessness, or fidgeting” is simply too soft a word to describe the
angst most clinicians see on intake with this population. At best it may
be an apt descriptor for individuals who, despite strong evidence to
the contrary, are making an extraordinary effort to convince themselves
that they are sex/gender congruent. These individuals make life
decisions such as getting married and having children not only because
they may find it appealing to have a spouse and have children but with
the added hope that this activity will ease or erase their obsessive
cross gender thoughts. Although there may be instances where these
special efforts succeed, (i.e. the incongruity is mild) the more likely
outcome is a realization they have actually made matters worse.
Typically, at time of presentation these individuals report that either
their lives are in ruin, or they are very afraid that if their gender
variant condition was to become known they would loose all that they
cherish and be ostracized from family, friends and the ability to
support themselves. High anxiety and deep depression with concurrent
suicide ideation is common. One of the most extreme cases I have treated
was that of a 50 year old genetic male, married and the father of 3
grown children with an international reputation as a scientist who
reported to me that the reason he finally sought out treatment for his
gender issues was because the number of times he found himself curled up
in the corner of his office in the fetal position muffling his cry was
increasing. That is not dysphoria, that is pure misery.
You get the same effects with patients who have had genitals damaged in war, accident, cancer etc.

As to why – we’re not sure. All we can do is record the facts. Patients who need to transition do better if treated than patients who aren’t. Death rate cut by a factor of 10. Nothing else works.

In young kids, the few who we can definitely be sure are trans (most who present with Gender Dysphoria aren’t, they’re just pre-gay) function as well as controls after treatment. You can’t tell the difference on psych tests.

Those who get treated late can do as well, but statistically, don’t. Some wounds never fully heal. But that’s true of life generally.

Cemeteries can be pretty bleak places, but when it is on the
outskirts of a faceless Dutch suburb under a grey January sky, it feel
about as about as desolate as you can possibly get. When you are
visiting the grave of a child who killed herself in her early teens, the
feeling of despair, especially when accompanied by her mother, gives
way to an urge to weep bitterly. It is an urge which I am unable to
resist as I do the maths subtracting the date of death from the day she
was born. It is one thing to be told Juliaantje* was only 14, but to see
it carved in marble was too much to bear. Holding her photograph her
mother sobs uncontrollably as I hug her while she in turn hugs a
precious photograph.

The picture is of a sunny, smiling, apparently bubbly teenager, with
long hair and a grey T-shirt. There is nothing in the picture to suggest
that she was transgender, but that is the reason she took her life.

When she was 12 her mother tried to have her put onto hormone blockers
to delay puberty. She didn’t want to develop body hair, a deep voice or
have wet dreams. She had already self-harmed when young, trying to slice
her penis off with a pair of scissors. However, in what was clearly a
borderline decision, the psychologists decided to that she should not be
given these drugs. She should be given counselling instead. In despair
her mother, a single parent, tried to take her to the United States, but
the air fare and the £200 a month cost of these drugs was way beyond
her means. Her father had no money either and both sets of grandparents
didn’t want to know.

Two years later the talking therapy failed. Juliaantje took a massive
overdose and died, having self-harmed, abused alcohol and other
substances for more than a year before that.

“She was an intelligent and lively girl.” Her mother tells me through
the tears and a large glass of Genever in a nearby café, probably the
only thing that can deaden the pain of losing her only child. “She had a
great future ahead of her, she could have done anything, been a doctor,
a lawyer her teachers said…” Her voice breaks. Her happy nature had
disappeared when male puberty really hit. “Her voice broke and she
started to get facial hair and hair on her chest. She wore make up and
turtle-neck jumpers to hide it all, but she simply couldn’t deal with
the way her body was developing…”

Did she blame the psychiatrists? No. Psychiatry is never going to be an
exact science, there will always be people who don’t fit into their
categories. She does however, feel that they could have given her the
benefit of the doubt. “The effects of hormone blockers are easy to
reverse, you just stop taking them…” There would have been no risk to
her daughter if, at any time she decided that she did not want to be a
girl she could simply have stopped, and male puberty would have started.
Hormone Blockers are essentially a way for
young trans people and children to leave their options open. They open
an extended open window of choice, which gives them time to think about
their future, a time during which young people can decide whether they
wish to remain the sex they were assigned at birth, whether that be male
or female, or whether they need gender reassignment surgery after the
age of 18. Talking to mothers of transgender children in the UK who have
been prescribed hormone blockers, usually at great cost (£200 a month
plus the cost of a consultation in and flight to the United States) one
thing comes across loudly and clearly; “I would rather have a live
daughter than a dead son.” One of them told me. One mother had
remortgaged her house to pay the cost of these drugs knowing what her
child was like, she realised that this would probably be the only way to
keep her alive.

Another mother talked of how her young child had been prescribed a
cocktail of a dozen drugs, including Ritalin, because of behaviour
problems at home and at school. Yet when her child was recognised as
transgender everything changed. As soon as she was treated as a girl,
the tantrums, the bedwetting, the crying, the screaming, the
hyperactivity, the violence, just stopped, as did the need for any of
the drugs. “She became happy and contented almost overnight, just
because we treated her like a girl! The psychologist who spotted this
probably saved her life.”

Predictably the accusation of “child abuse” has been levelled at those
who advocate prescribing hormone blockers to children between the ages
of 12 and 15 (they already are prescribed to those over the age of 16)
in the UK. This flies in the face of the evidence in both the United
States and Holland, where these drugs have been successfully, and
harmlessly prescribed for many years. It also flies in the face of the
experience of parents of transgender children, who have lived a
day-to-day existence, hoping that their child is still alive and in one
piece. Until her daughter was prescribed hormone blockers at age 16 one
mother told me of the anguish she and her husband felt when their child
had gone missing for a few days when she was 14. “We really thought we
would never see her again. Every time the phone rang we thought it would
be the police wanting us to identify a body.”

The tentative diagnosis (after 5 years of tests and examination of responses to various hormones…) is the 3 beta hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase deficient (3BHSD) form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). Atypical too, late onset and non salt wasting. Usually the sex change it causes happens before birth, not after, but sometimes it can happen late in life, as with me.

CAH cause women to masculinise. Often almost imperceptibly, but in about 10% of cases they’re effectively men.

The fact that the change for me was welcome (female neurology) and natural (needed some surgery to reconstruct the mess left after the change, it’s rarely complete), seems to me to be a minor detail.

I used to look mostly male. That sucked really, really badly. Now I’m just a plain-jane middle aged frimpy female academic. That suits me fine, and would have done even if my life history had been more usual.

“Cathy Brennan . . . is a lesbian radical feminist who’s made it her life
goal to stalk, humiliate and endanger the lives of trans women, whom
she believes are “fake” women trying to destroy feminism by infiltrating
it. . . .”

Just like all the lesbian and bisexual garbage of women who infiltrated the women’s movement way back when and made it into the sexual sewer that it is now. They didn’t destroy feminism, they completely perverted it to the junk that it is now.

This is so lovely to watch.

“Cathy Brennan is a despicable human being, and if she hates you, you know you’re doing something right.”

That’s what I think when I hear the LGBT and liberal mob saying they hate my critique of their destructive and perverted sexuality agenda. That such harmful people have taken over academia has such profoundly negative consequences for the country. Sad, sad.

In any case, lovely job, McCain, in fighting the “down your throats” people!

Wouldn’t a DNA test be able to show you if someone is a man or a woman?

Beyond biology (which seems to be your obsession), there is something about being a woman that men simply do not “get.” (I am likewise sure that I would never be able to “pass” as a man among men.) Psychologists have long noted that women don’t accept trans women as their own, regardless of physical appearance. There is just something “off” about them that is difficult to quantify but is, nevertheless, real.

They can cut and take all the hormones they want, dress up in a skirt, but they are still men. This is not “crazy”; it is reality. But for those whose raison d’etre is denying reality, that would seem crazy, would it not?

bridget January 5th, 2014 @ 10:59 am

Stupid question, but why would a guy have such a hang-up about the “rape culture”? If you lived as a man until your early middle age, then you likely have zero idea of what you’re talking about.

I do feel sorry for you, but wish you would understand that we’re not going to up end the entire structure of our society for your particular problem.

bridget January 5th, 2014 @ 11:58 am

I don’t need to be a Latin scholar to know that cis and trans are opposites: I learned that in organic chemistry class. Unlike organic chemistry, wherein “cis” desribes a meaningful characteristic of a molecule, “cis-gendered” merely means” not disordered.” It should be evidence of how far society has fallen that people are trying to make “not disordered” into an actual term.

That you even ask such a question indicates deep cluelessness on the subject. But it does make your wild accusations of “reality denial” understandable.

These situations are not usual, not common. But then, we’re not talking about common, usual situations are we? Most people aren’t transsexual. Only 1 in 300 men don’t have the usual 46,XY chromosomes most men have, and even fewer women do. But they exist, despite your belief that not only do they not, they can’t. A belief that denies reality.

One could say that’s rather elegant.
I have been known to do it myself.

But even if I thought it was un-beautiful, I’d have no right to do more than state that my preference differed, not that yours was “wrong” in any way. De gustibus non est disputandum.

“He or She” is usually fine. “S/he” though is more usually perjorative.

In a context where one is talking about trans people, it’s, best avoided.

Bridget January 6th, 2014 @ 10:13 am

Alan, I’m an engineer. In our world, if a test correctly gives the result 99.3% of the time (or, as per the giving birth part, something like 99.999% of the time), it is almost always an acceptable test.

Despite being a “rocket scientist,” you cannot distinguish between the rules and the exceptions thereto. Sorry, Alan, but that’s not my problem.

Let us not be distracted by your “But in this totally random case, the opposite result happened!” agenda. The original problem is a discussion about how trans “women” are invading women’s spaces and get really upset when lesbians won’t do them.

Alan, please explain what a medical journal will tell us about the social problems therein. (Here’s a clue, rocket scientist: absolutely nothing.)

SHAMELESS CAPITALISM

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